An artist, a free spirit, an idealist and dreamer, Raj, is certain that he has found his ultimate dream when he arrives at a quaint picturesque town. A place surrounded by mountains, shrouded in mist and enveloped in beauty, mythical enough to be a painter's vision or a poet's memory.

However, destiny paints a different picture for Raj. One silent bright and starry night, he spots a mysterious girl draped in black, standing alone at a bridge.

This chance encounter introduces him to Sakina, a shy and quiet, melancholic and enigmatic girl who continues to intrigue him. Thus follows the beginning of a new friendship, where Raj with his most charming ways and an undying spirit tries to win Sakina's heart. Raj is unable to accept her haunting past and their friendship pulls him into a whirlwind of desire, madness and romance.

Through Raj and Sakina's journey together, we are reminded of the fragility of the human heart. In the couple's anguish and test of faith, is revealed the power of unconditional love through a thousand layers of tumultuous emotions.
 
"A really small movie done up in a big, moody package, Saawariya entices, fitfully springs to life..."  Derek Elley, Variety
"Eye and ear candy for fans of Indian musical cinema...visually enchanting, cloyingly sweet, at once utterly chaste and insanely erotic..."  The New York Times
 


Editor's Note

Bollywood and Hollywood entwine for this mix of romance, singing, comedy, dancing, and melodrama, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (DEVDAS) and produced in tandem with Sony/Columbia. The achingly beautiful Rani Mukherjee narrates and appears as Gulab, a streetcorner princess haunting the red light district in an expressionistic melange of Venice, Vegas, and Amsterdam. The irrepressibly callow musician Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) catches her eye, but Raj thinks he's in love with Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) who prefers to pine away for her absent lover, Imaan (Salman Kahn). All this longing (it's based on Dostoyevsky's WHITE NIGHTS) is stunningly captured through bizarre and elaborate backdrops, winding staircases, torrents of rain, and a color scheme heavy on the blues. Fans of Baz Luhrman's MOULIN ROUGE will want to live inside this film: there may not a whole lot of weight to all the tomfoolery, but the pain of youthful romantic idealism is part of the message. The music is always the thing with Bollywood films and SAAWARIYA packs in its share of rousing numbers. Western viewers entering the realm of Bollywood for the first time will find SAAWARIYA ("beloved" in Hindi) to be a crossover film that's ready to welcome them with open arms into a jubilant world of high-spirited song and dance, over-the-top goofiness, anguished melodrama, gyrating hips (with very sexy exposed belly buttons), and PG-rated romance.